Acclaim Studios London

Acclaim Studios London
Founded	1984
Headquarters	Cheltenham, England, UK
Other Names	Probe Entertainment Iguana London Acclaim Studios London

Acclaim Studios London was an English game developer founded by Fergus McGovern. It was founded in 1984 as Probe Software or Probe Entertainment. The company developed for most of the platforms that were popular during its lifespan. These included the NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Gear, Genesis, and Master System. The company had also developed a bevy of movie-licensed games such as Alien 3, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Robocop 3.

In October 1995, Acclaim purchased Probe and renamed the company Acclaim Studios London on the 27th. The company closed its doors in 1999 when Acclaim went out of business.

Some staff founded Syrox Developments, Acclaim Studios Cheltenham, HotGen, Coyote Developments and Crawfish Interactive.

Games

• Games developed by Probe Software.
• Games published by Probe Software.

Music Development

Amstrad CPC and Atari ST

The following games use the same driver:

• Beach Buggy Simulator (CPC)
• Cybernoid (AST) (the only game out of these nine with no known relation to Probe; manual credits Gary Knight)
• Demons Revenge (CPC)
• I, Ball (AST)
• Ninja Scooter Simulator (CPC)
• Pogostick Olympics (CPC)
• Slap Fight (CPC)
• Solomon's Key (AST)
• Trantor (AST)

Game Boy

The first two Probe Software games on the Game Boy used a sound driver by Jeroen Tel. After that, starting in 1994, Edward Haynes developed a new sound driver, used for the rest of Probe's Game Boy titles. David Shea developed the last driver used by Probe.

All games by Probe that use Haynes' and Shea's versions of the driver feature a "(C)Probe." string at the start of the sound code.

Stargate uses Beam Software's sound driver, since Australian developer Torus Games was involved at development.

Genesis/32X

Many composers worked for Probe during their Genesis/Mega Drive development including Andy Brock, Steve Collett, and even outsourcing music to Matt Furniss of Krisalis Softwware.

In Back to the Future III, the game uses a driver by John M. Philips, who arranged Barry Leitch's score from the computer versions. For FIFA Soccer 96 (32X), the game contained audio by Kris Hatlelid.

Body Count, The Pagemaster and the unreleased Jelly Boy all use GEMS. The rest of their Genesis games, including Batman Forever, Stargate, Judge Dredd, Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble, and the Genesis and 32X ports of Primal Rage use a custom sound driver; Stargate credits Edward Haynes for sound code. According to Andy Brock, the composers would use a variant of Edward Haynes' IMED engine by David Shea to write their music.

NES

The only composer to do NES music for Probe Software was Jeroen Tel, in which he wrote his own audio driver and wrote the music in hexadecimal.

Sega Master System

Some of the company's games' audio was outsourced to Krisalis Software, in which Matt Furniss wrote the music in a tracker program for the Atari Mega ST.

For their in-house work, Jeroen Tel composed the music and sound effects in his sound driver in assembly.

Allister Brimble used Tel's sound driver for the T2: The Arcade Game, Mortal Kombat and Desert Speedtrap starring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.

Outside of Probe, Tel's sound driver was used by Brimble at Software Creations' game Spider-Man & X-Men in Arcade's Revenge.

Their last games for Game Gear uses Edward Haynes' sound driver.

SNES

Andy Brock's explanation of the SNES sound development at Probe:

“

Carl Muller was the programmer who wrote the initial proprietary audio development system for Probe, and then David Shea took over to further develop the tools. (The version used for T2 Arcade SNES was all Carl's version). After him, another guy named Edward Haynes developed it further until he quit at the end of 1994 over not being paid an Xmas bonus or something, then Dave Shea came back on to finish it. The final version of it was called IMED (named after the programmer Ed), and was actually great to use.

„

Chuck Rock credits the audio driver to Carl Muller, Stefan Walker, Sean Dunlevy, and Jason Gee.

Nintendo 64

Initially, composers uses their own sound tools, which possibly developed by Ashley Bennett.

After the company was bought by Acclaim, they used Iguana Entertainment's sound driver on Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. and Re-Volt.

Audio Personnel

• Allister Brimble
• Andrew Rodger
• Andy Brock
• Anthony Putson
• Carl Muller
• David Shea
• David Whittaker
• Edward Haynes
• Geoff Follin
• Jason Brooke
• Jeroen Tel
• John Phillips
• Keith Leary (hired under contract from PC Music)
• Matt Furniss (hired under contract from Krisalis Software)
• Nick Stroud
• Shaun Hollingworth - Sound driver provider (hired under contract from Krisalis Software).
• Steve Collett
• Tim Follin

Links

• mobygames.com/company/112/acclaim-studios-limited/ - MobyGames.
• gamefaqs.gamespot.com/games/company/74099-probe-software - GameFAQs on Probe Software.
• gamefaqs.gamespot.com/games/company/13068-probe-entertainment-limited - GameFAQs on Probe Entertainment.
• gamefaqs.gamespot.com/games/company/181137-acclaim-studios-london - GameFAQs on Acclaim Studios London.
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Acclaim_Entertainment_subsidiaries#Acclaim_Studios_London - Wikipedia.